Student agency in a high-power Confucian Heritage Culture : school leaders and students as allies or enemies?

Abstract

The study deals with the concept of student agency during education reform in a high-power Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) country with a view to exploring how student roles in student agency development are perceived by school leaders and students as well as what enables and constrains it from a socio-cultural perspective. The study gives insight into the current state of reform toward student-centered learning after 5 years of implementation. It expands the discourse of student agency and power in Asia. The research was carried out using two methodological instruments semi-structured interviews with school leaders and open-ended surveys with students in three different middle schools in Vietnam. The interviews were done with 5 leaders (2 principals and 3 head teachers); an email response to the interview questions was collected from another principal. Seventeen to twenty-two surveys were collected from each school, for a total of 59 surveys. Using thematic analysis and Kreiler (2018)’s categorization, the research identified eight roles with which students were associated, of which four they embraced and four rejected. Students embraced the roles of (1) actively identifying their interests, (2) learning ways to self-regulate to achieve goals, (3) knowing and using their rights, and (4) behaving responsibly with others. Meanwhile, they resisted imposed roles of (1) simply reproducing knowledge, (2) achieving goals set by others, (3) obeying rules and authority without mutual consent, and (4) placing academic identity over other identities. Enablers and constraints in the practice of relational, participatory, and contextual resources were identified using the adapted version of Agency of University Students scale (Jääskelä et al., 2021). Finally, some values of CHC appear to have both negative and positive influences on student agency development. It is, however, not the sole culprit that caused tensions between schools and students that constrain student agency. The research investigates opportunities to better foster a relationship of alliance between schools and students.

Keywords: student agency, Confucian Heritage Culture, student-centered learning, power imbalance, education reform